Personalised 2011 £2 Coin

I wonder if it could be someone's attempt at a "legal" circulating token. "I LOVE U LANI" might have been chosen as something that looks relatively like "TWO POUNDS" with a quick glance. This way, the 'coins' do not technically claim to be 2 Pound coins, but could be passed on as such. Reminds me of Civil War or Hard Times Tokens from the US. Many would look just like the current cent, but the reverse would say "not ONE CENT", with the ONE CENT in noticeably bigger letters, to fool those taking a quick glance into thinking it really was a cent.

This 2015 non-personalised was recently sold by auction on ebay (reflections of a compact camera on the coin).



We can see:

1. A new obverse variant bearing the same text as on real IRB 'technological' obverse.

2. Reverse is modified from the LANI, such that

- inscriptions changed (obviously)

- defective cog at 10 o'clock has been mended (hat tip: RED)

- central 'zits' added to those solid cogs that were missing them

- outer network devices have been beefed up with bigger central nodes and arcs varying in thickness

- outer ring of dots missing. Presumably, in order to reset the type chars in the master collage they had to break the original ring of dots, but wouldn't leave it patched up as they 'don't do messy'.

And in any case it would soon be probably be redundant with future orders likely to favour Britannias and more commemoratives, without the central 'hologram' giveaway. Maybe also the outer network devices got damaged while breaking off the remaining dots, hence they were beefed up to cover over this damage somehow.

Looking closely at the date numerals relative to the features near them, it appears all were re-set versus on the LANI, with the possible exception of the zero.

The seller was in Swansea, and has also auctioned several HMS Belfast using pictures of one the fakes, and has at least several satisfied customers for these.

Nothing to say if the seller is connected to the local importer. This seller does not seem to list more than one of the same type simultaneously, but this may just be to avoid depressing prices.